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In Asylum, you had 3 main attributes. In Faith, you had 14. The effects and inter-relations of these Virtues were complex, dynamic, and interesting. A lot of the complexity of the game, in fact, came into play just from the consequences and the movement of these Virtues from generation to generation of your followers. This focus on mechanics over core gameplay was fatal.

Rather than strategies focusing on using certain mechanics or features of the game, they focused on attaining a certain mix of Virtues. This was not a design goal, but more a consequence of thinking about Faith too much as a simulation and not enough as a game.

So maybe you were going high military high birthrate, or maybe high economy high loyalty. Since most game mechanics could get you any Virtue, it sucked the life and identity out of any one mechanic. It was a hard lesson, but building and evolving Faith taught me more about what makes a game fun than I ever could have expected.

On the other hand, I loved those little icons.